7. Sometimes we are tempted to find excuses

and complain, acting as if we could only be

happy if a thousand conditions were met. To 

some extent this is because our “technological

society has succeeded in multiplying occasions

of pleasure, yet has found it very difficult to engender

joy”.2 I can say that the most beautiful

and natural expressions of joy which I have seen

in my life were in poor people who had little to

hold on to. I also think of the real joy shown

by others who, even amid pressing professional

obligations, were able to preserve, in detachment

and simplicity, a heart full of faith. In their own

way, all these instances of joy flow from the infinite

love of God, who has revealed himself to

us in Jesus Christ. I never tire of repeating those

words of Benedict XVI which take us to the very

heart of the Gospel: “Being a Christian is not the

result of an ethical choice or a lofty idea, but the

encounter with an event, a person, which gives

life a new horizon and a decisive direction”.3